Mark Wahlberg to produce hacker thriller

Mark Wahlberg leads the cast of a white-knuckle action thriller about a man trying to stay out of a world he worked hard to leave behind and the family he'll do anything to protect. Set in New Orleans, the film explores the cutthroat underground world of international smuggling, which is dominated by desperate criminals, corrupt officials, high-stakes and big payoffs. Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) abandoned his life of crime a long time ago, but after his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a drug deal for his ruthless boss, Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), he's forced back into doing what he does best-running contraband-to settle Andy's debt.

Mark Wahlberg is to produce an as-yet untitled thriller about a hacker.

The 'Broken City' actor could also take on a role in the Universal movie, which is being scripted by co-producer Jonathan Herman based on a piece written by David Kushner for GQ magazine called 'The Hacker Is Watching'.

The real-life case saw students at a large US high school targeted by a ruthless, skilled hacker who gained access to their computers and managed to set up the webcams on their laptops to film them unawares, as well as sending malware and various other rogue files to the machines.

Mark and Jonathan have previously produced 'Contraband' for Universal and are also developing action comedy 'Bait and Switch' and thriller 'The Disciple Program' for the studio.

Mark can next be seen starring in 'Broken City', '2 Guns', and 'Lone Survivor', and was recently linked with a role in 'Transformers 4'.

Director Michael Bay - who helmed the first three films in the franchise - previously dismissed speculation the 'Ted' star is going to be in the forthcoming movie but the filmmaker has now hinted the 41-year-old star could appear in the motion picture after rumours presented him with the idea to cast Mark.

In a post on his personal website, Michael wrote: ''I squashed a rumor that was on the internet last week. It was about Mark Walhberg. Mark was rumored to be staring in Transformers 4. We are working on another movie together, not T4.

''I had such a great time working with Mark on 'Pain and Gain', and he gave such a great performance - well let's say that very internet chatter gave me some ideas. We are at the inception of our story process right now on T4. Let's say some ideas are gaining traction with me and my writer - so I'm here to say thanks internet chatter.''